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2252. Robert Southey to John Rickman, [April 1813]

I hope you have received Nelson. [1] I directed one for the Capitaneus also.

What a situation was that in the vault at Windsor. – The eye of Charles I open in the <his> coffin
after more than a century & half, that it might look upon the Prince
Regent & then close for ever! [2] – No poet ever imagined any thing more
aweful!

RS.

Notes

* Endorsement: Southey to Mr RickmanMS: University of Kentucky Library. ALS; 2p. A copy
in another hand (endorsed ‘Given to Mr Long’) is Huntington Library, RS 199Unpublished. Dating note:
Dated from content. BACK

[2] On 1 April 1813, the Prince Regent had attended the
opening of the coffin of Charles I (1600–1649; reigned 1625–1649; DNB). It was reported that ‘the left eye [of the
corpse], in the first moment of exposure, was open and full, though it vanished almost immediately’, see Sir Henry Halford
(1766–1844; DNB), An Account of What Appeared on Opening the Coffin of King Charles the First, in the Vault of
King Henry the Eighth in St George’s Chapel at Windsor (1813), p. 8. BACK